


Today I bury you in me

by TyrantTirade



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cancer, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Implied Sexual Content, Insomnia, M/M, Mentioned Pregnancy, Minor Suicidal Thoughts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sick Bucky Barnes, Sickfic, Steve Rogers Feels, Vomiting, cancer treatments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TyrantTirade/pseuds/TyrantTirade
Summary: "Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."Stephen KingSteve had time to prepare, it wasn't a sudden thing. Everyone, even Bucky had time to prepare for it to finally come but Steve didn't really realize how much it would hurt until it happened.Steve's heart is destroyed and he's never really wanted anything more than to just have Bucky tell him that it's going to be okay.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is sad through and through, please don't read if you're easily saddened or triggered. Im no good at descriptions or warning but I cannot stress enough that this is sad. There's a bit of a happy ending but not necessarily a satisfying one, it's bittersweet.
> 
> However if you're a sadomasochist like me and you like to hurt then read on!
> 
>  
> 
> If you have any questions before you read ask me on [My Tumblr](Tyranttirade.tumblr)
> 
> Let me know if there's any errors or issues that need to be fixed.
> 
>  
> 
> Edit 10/26/16  
> I made some changes, added some things and mixed some things up, etc.

Steve hasn't slept in 6 days. He doesn't talk about it.

  
  


—

There's something incredibly surreal about terminal diagnoses. It's clinical and flat and set across the table like some sort of lawsuit that you know you'll never win. Because they're just a human and cancers a corporation. 

 

_ Hodgkins Lymphoma _

 

The chance of remissing lymphoma is something like one in twenty. The chances of remissing stage three lymphoma is something like one in a million. It spreads so fast that it burrows into everything and festers under the patient's skin like a parasite to its host. 

“What are our options?” That time old saying like grasping for broken strings. Phones pulled out in an instant to search for answers like a problem that can be solved. It's just a puzzle. google it.

While the patient sits with their palms curled in their laps and nothingness in their eyes. It's hard to grasp, during the prime of your life the fact of mortality and that maybe you're not infinite.

  
  


—

Every cancer patient grieves for themselves, they aren't the only one losing someone they love. It's just as difficult for the anchor to sink as it is to let it go. 

And Bucky grieves hard. There's about a week long span on Steve holding Bucky sobbing body, choking on tears and desperate wails because he doesn't know what to do. No one knows what to do.

  
  


—

_ Acupuncture  _

_ aromatherapy _

_ no refined sugars _

_ no processed meats _

 

This time it's a grape fast. 5 weeks- 12 hours consuming only water, 12 consuming only grapes.

It's on week two and Bucky's sick of grapes. 

This isn't the first stupid diet Bucky's taken. His mom keeps giving him  _ ‘living with cancer’  _ cookbooks and strange treatments written on sticky notes that she hears from her friends at bingo night.

 

_ Urine bathing _

_ bloodletting _

_ sauna visits _

_ cabbage diets. _

  
  


—

A patient can't live without lymph nodes. They basically filter everything. So unlike most cancers, lymphoma cannot be cured by surgery.

The only option really for someone with aggressive lymphoma is heavy doses of radiation and chemotherapy.

  
  


—

The chemo isn't as bad as he had imagined. It's a few hours of sitting in an uncomfortable recliner with Steve sitting next to him, laying his head on Steve's shoulder while he reads ‘ _ Misery _ ’

  
  


—

That night he wakes up at 3:27 and vomits. 

Steve being a saint holds Bucky's overgrown hair back from his face and cleans him up. Wipes a wet cloth over his head and brushes his teeth while Bucky sits on the toilet feeling useless. 

Steve carries him to the bed and holds him with their lab dodger at the end of the bed.

He's been told a dozen times that it's just going to get worse from there before it gets better.

  
  


—

It becomes a bi-weekly thing and sure enough it does get worse. He loses pounds upon pounds of muscle mass and he's so weak that he sometimes sleeps on the couch with Steve because he can't walk up the stairs.

He keeps his job though, part time so he can feel at least a little self-worth. 

  
  


—

But it's not all bad, He and Steve go to a lot of broadway shows and museums and they eat at one of those ridiculously overpriced restaurants on the 32nd floor of a hotel.

Funnily enough it's probably the closest he and Steve have ever been. Like they're trying to wrap everything up into a short span of time.

They make love almost every night and it's not like it used to be. It's desperate touching and holding and Steve telling Bucky how perfect he is.

  
  


—

It takes a lot longer for Bucky to lose his hair than he thought it would. He's told that because his health, the fact that although a walking stew of cancer he's physically fit so his body's hanging on better than most patient's. That's a good sign, means that he has higher chances.

The hair doesn't fall out in strands or sections but in assorted clumps across his pillow in the morning when he wakes up or in the shower. And it's not just the hair on his head, His leg hair and chest hair and pubic hair all shed away too.

He stops growing facial hair. He and Steve joke that Bucky's evolving into a Siamese cat. They make the decision to shave their heads together after Steve pulls a chunk of hair out of Bucky's head by washing his hair while they're in the shower together. It terrifies him.

Bucky hates being bald “I look like q-ball while you look like some high fashion model, it's bullshit Steve.” 

Steve holds Bucky in bed and runs his hand over it “I think you look perfect.”

  
  


—

His mom worries a lot, and he gets it, he does. But Bucky's tired of being treated like he's breakable around them. 

There's a lot of family gatherings and dinners. She breaks down when she sees him with no hair.

  
  


—

His birthday is spent in the hospital because he's got an infection in his foot. 

Sam, Natasha, Clint, Tony, pepper, Thor, even Dr. Banner come to visit him. They leave gifts. 

Tony gives him a big package of cancer friendly food, nothing with sugar or preservatives like Steve suggests and items like overpriced soap and an almost too soft blanket. 

Nat gives him some Russian tea cakes and A season of  _ house  _ on Dvd on the pretense that “Because you love house” Bucky's never watched house.

 

Sam leaves a bottle of Skyy. Bucky can't drink it but it's given out of love with a little note that says   
  


_ ‘Remember the time you got so wasted on this stuff that you knocked my mother's China cabinet down and then proceeded to sob on her kitchen floor over how sorry you were until Steve had to carry you home.  _

_ I went along and You forgot about the cabinet about 2 minutes after leaving because you were too mesmerized by Steve's biceps. _

_ My mom's still pissed off about you breaking her China.  _

_ she says she loves you by the way. _

_ I love you too man _

__ -Sam _ _

 

_ p.s, As soon as you get out you're getting 27 slaps to your ass for your 27th birthday in the most platonic way possible. _

  
  


—

_ Stage four _

 

it's a setback. Leukemia; it's not unexpected but it feels like ton of bricks dropped on his shoulders.

That means that his immune system has weakened, anaemia, and more radiation.

  
  


—

Bucky goes home so Steve can take care of him for the mean time but his health is getting worse. 

Steve wraps him up in blankets in the bed with warm tea and house playing on the tv, Steve holds him, pets his head and listens to him breathe until Bucky gets needy and they end up touching each other with as much enthusiasm as Bucky's body will allow. It's slow and weak and beautiful.

  
  


—

A few hours later Bucky vomits blood across the bed and onto Steve's chest. 

They warned about it but the sheer amount was more than they expected. Steve carries Bucky to the car and that's the last time Bucky's inside their home.

  
  


—

Being at stage four means everything moves fast, sometimes impossibly fast. 

They schedule a high dose radiation treatment. It's heavy enough to almost kill a healthy man.

  
  


—

it's 8 hours of Bucky isolated in a room with a device focused on the nodes in his neck where the cancer seems to be spreading from the worst.

  
  


—

Bucky's got a bruise that spans across his entire neck and jaw that makes the cleft on his chin yellow and purple. There's blisters and sore. He's so weak that they insert a feeding tube into his stomach and give him a catheter. 

Steve lies in the hospital bed next to Bucky and he's so small that Steve almost doesn't recognize him. But he presses kisses to Bucky's face and neck and tells him how much he loves him and Bucky always says it back. 

Steve has to get up for the nurse to check him and change the dressing on his neck and every time Bucky begs “Stevie” like he's afraid for Steve to leave his side. They give him a medication to stop his nausea but the downside is that it makes him sleep, a lot.

 

Radiations a real bitch.

  
  


—

It's just two weeks after the leukemia diagnosis and the bruises are faded to just yellows and browns. He's still coughing blood but they have him on some heavy doses of vitamins and meds to calm his body, things to boost his metabolism so he stops losing weight, high protein supplements are being pumped into his stomach, and high amounts of painkillers.

_ “A possible tumor in his lung” _

and he's tired. So fucking tired yet all he does is sleep. They schedule another massive radiation session to target the lymph nodes in his thighs.

 

“No”

 

“What do you mean no?”

 

“I mean no, I'm not doing it”

 

“You have to do it”

 

“I don't wanna do it, it hurts, I'm tired of it”

 

“But it could help”

 

“Or it could not help and just hurt like it does every other time.”

 

Bucky's family fight him for hours until he establishes the he's not going to let it happen. 

Steve just says “Okay, whatever you need buck” and that's the first time throughout this whole process that he's felt at least a little in control.

  
  


—

Banner visits him daily, sometimes to talk treatments or possibilities. Sometimes to talk about Bucky's life and his interests. 

Banner sugarcoats a lot, says things like “It could possibly spread” and “We may be limited with our time.” 

Bucky wishes that banner would just tell him that he's going to die.

“We're going to try for two months” That's what he says in that particular chat with Bucky and Steve squeezes his hand with the words. Steve never says much though. Steve listens and let's Bucky make his own decisions and Bucky's forever grateful for that. 

  
  


—

Two months is actually A week but that's how cancer works. 

Bucky signs a few forms denying treatment. 

He and Steve talk for hours about the fact that Bucky's ready he's tired and he's ready and Steve's nothing but supportive. 

  
  


—

There's not a final word and then a final breath like a western movie shoot out. It's not intense with screaming and pleading because it's expected. 

It's Bucky's breath losing its strength, it's Bucky saying I love you to everyone and kissing Steve's lips with as much strength as he can manage and telling him “Please don't be sad baby, you know how Fucking much I love you right.” 

It's a medically induced coma and a respirator and a few days of hoping. 

It's Bucky's family and Steve all sitting in a little waiting room and discussing removing him from the life support. 

A few hours later is just that. 

  
  


—

You expect a dead body to look like a corpse but it's not that at all. There's a strange sense of peace to it. How still and calm they are. 

Steve's the last one alone with him. They unplugged the monitor so there's no flat line. They pulled out the I.v’s and tubes. And he's still so warm, the tips of his fingers feel loose in Steve's palm and there's this really fucked up okayness to it all. Like it's just alright.

  
  


—

The reality of losing someone you love while you're still very much in love is the real heartbreaking part of it all. The realization that you'll never get to look into their eyes and profess Poetics about how in love you really are. 

  
  


—

Steve attends weekly group sessions for families and spouses that have lost loved ones to cancer. He doesn't ever speak about it, allows the mothers of children and siblings to gush about the lives of the people they lost. 

He doesn't really like to speak about it.

  
  


—

But he does speak about it a lot to their dog Dodger. Dodger listens well and Dodger will never tell Steve that his grief has an expiration date. It's been 7 months.

Dodger still sits at the door waiting for Bucky to get home.

  
  


—

After the funeral services he slept for a week straight and then he developed the inability to sleep at all. 

His therapist said insomnia caused by minor post traumatic stress disorder. 

Post loss grief. It's the fact that Steve slept with Bucky beside him for 8 years and his minds unable to process sleeping alone. 

A lot of the time they suggest getting a dog or a cat to sleep with but for Steve it's a prescription of Zoloft. 

He doesn't take it. Part of him wants to just die of his broken heart and his inability to sleep. 

Steve just wants him back. He wants him back so bad that it makes him sick. 

  
  


—

The funeral services are so incredibly beautiful even in such an awful time. There were so many flower bouquets and photos of him happy and living that they fill up every slot of space around the casket. 

Its open and he was smiling and he looks comfortable and asleep. Its another moment of earth shattering okay-ness.

Steve actually speaks although he can't stand doing it. He knows how much Bucky would have wanted it; knowing that Steve's doing at least a little okay. That tiny little amount of spirituality still left in Steve hoped that Bucky was up there somewhere getting some contentment in Steve going on. 

Bucky was always afraid that Steve wouldn't be able to handle Bucky being gone. 

But it's always easier to lose someone slowly, to prepare for it and get your final goodbye than it is to lose someone to something sudden like a car accident. That's probably the one beautiful thing about cancer, having that time to love them with all of your soul, that time of knowing that the ends on it way and you have a particular amount of time to ready yourself. 

“Ive asked myself a dozen times since the diagnosis ‘If I knew about everything when Bucky and I met as Kids or when we fell in love as teenagers, would I still have went through it all?’ and I think at one point- at the beginning I said no because it was too much to deal with. But now I don't think that I could have ever actually lived without him.” He breathes past a choke in his throat.

“I'd be a liar if I said that it doesn't hurt but goddamn I am so incredibly grateful that I had him while I could. Bucky is so many things, he's unrealistically handsome and he has this way with words that nobody else has, He is just so genuine and he's...perfect.

“Im aware that some people, some here- aren't okay with what we had but I just hope you know that no matter who Bucky was with, even if it didn't end up being me- He was the most loving, kind, selfless guy I ever knew. He deserved gross fairytale love and cheesy romantic comedy perfection. 

“I just hope that I gave him the happy ending that he deserved.”

  
  


—

He didn't cry until he got home. He laid in their empty bed and squeezed Bucky's pillow with dodger laying over his legs. He stared at the framed picture of them at Coney island and sobbed until the tears quit flowing. 

He spent three days staring at the photo until the realization that he was dehydrated set in so he stumbled to the kitchen to get a bottle of water. 

He laid on the couch and watched cartoon network for another few days.

  
  


—

When you lose someone important to you it feels like you lose everything. Like the floor beneath your feet is crumbling with each step and everything is just grey. Colors don't matter, breathing doesn't matter so all that matters is them and the hole in your chest.

Steve paints on autopilot and tries to complete commissions on time. He catches himself painting Bucky nine times out of ten then sets the canvas or sheet in a stack labeled ‘Wip’ He tells himself that it's not a waste of paper or canvas fabric because Bucky's never a waste. 

If he could just provide his income exclusively on selling pieces of Bucky he wouldn't mind. 

Every few months he sends the pieces of Bucky that he likes to Bucky's family. He doesn't have room on his walls to hang up anymore in their home without feeling hopeless. 

It's still their home.

He just hopes that the paintings he sends to Bucky's family do him justice. No amount of paint or charcoal or ink will ever justify how unfathomably beautiful Bucky was.

After five months He's slowly getting used to Bucky being past tense.

  
  


—

One of the hardest parts is when Becca calls. 

It's always sporadic at three or four am while Steve's restless and his eyes burn but his head just won't let him sleep. 

Her voice sobbed out and broken apart. Wet tears into the phone. It always leaves Steve a little more hollow and stripped but there's some comfort in how her accent is sorta like Bucky's was. Thick Brooklyn and soft sweet. 

It always begins with something like “I miss him” Steve never says it back. He just listens but he feels it too, equally the same. 

But he tries his best. He tells her memories and stories like “You remember that time he wrecked his bike and broke his elbow

“He cried like a baby while all three feet of me tried to carry his hobbling ass home. 

“And then he insisted on having a pink cast”

She always laughs and allows Steve to reminisce about bucky until he's hoarse from laughter. 

He's starting to think that she does it more for him than herself. He thinks maybe getting so close to her is one of the goods in Bucky being gone. She reminds him a lot of Bucky in every way.

  
  


—

The first time he speaks about Bucky in a way that doesn't pretend that he's still around is with an older client in his studio. 

He's got a massive canvas of Bucky, A portrait in soft pastel watercolors that run down like rain. Bucky's smiling so wide, it's taken from a picture Steve took of him on his phone during their trip to the Niagara falls just before Bucky's diagnosis.

The woman paces around the seating area while Steve gets some papers together to discuss the commission. 

It makes his heart ache to see her looking at the painting of Bucky, examining it like she's trying to remember what it looks like. “He's handsome” she says in a tone that implies that she knows yet she's not jumping to conclusions.

“Yeah” he responds and he wants to say ‘he is’ but he's working on past tense because even if he doesn't want to he's got to realize that Bucky's past tense.

“Do you know him?” 

“Yeah, I did.” He tries to smile like thinking about Bucky doesn't make him shut down.

“You loved him, I can tell by how much attention you paid to his smile.” She doesn't specify how Steve loved him but just that Steve did love him and it's comforting, to know that people can see just how much he truly did.

“Very much” Steve sets the papers across the heavy oak coffee table while the client continues to look at the painting.

“I lost my husband in 2007” she says and she sounds so admirably okay with saying it. “Colon cancer, I never quit loving him but I realized over time that he needed to go. I couldn't be selfish and keep him in pain just so I wouldn't hurt.” She turns from the painting and smiles a relatively heartfelt thing. “I can tell that he loved you as well.”

“What was his name, your husband?” Steve interjects and he's not sure why he's asking but he wants to know.

“Gerald, And him?”

“James- um, cancer too, it's, it was lymphoma...Hodgkins.”

“He was beautiful Steve” The client says with a smile and Steve forces back the lump in his throat.

Steve's voice has no strength to it. “Thank you” he mumbles in a whisper. “He is- was- it's hard...to say that he was, because I want to say that he is but um- I'm just having a hard time with is and was.”

The woman sits in a chair in front of Steve and presses her fingertips into Steve's knee to silently let him know that he's not alone. “Never let yourself think that your grief should expire. Never assume that you have to be okay. You grieve how you need to sweetheart.” She pats his knee and smiles to him softly. He lifts his head from his chest to smile in return, there's no life to it but maybe that's okay. “Yes ma'am”

  
  


—

Steve gets his first date about eleven months after losing Bucky. It's with a woman named Peggy With brown hair and a pretty British accent that's nothing really like Bucky yet he likes her. 

“It's been some time since I've dated” she says right off the bat and it's reassuring that maybe Steve won't be the only one making awkward small talk.

“It's been- awhile for me too.” He means to say  _ a longass time _ but that's not appropriate.

But the date goes off surprisingly well and he likes Peggy A lot. He walks her to her car and kisses her cheek. He assumes that she disagrees though because his eyes are dark from his insomnia and he doesn't know how to style his hair because Bucky always did that for him so it's shaggy and a little too long. He's definitely not ready to date but it went better than he expected.

A few hours later he gets a text saying “ _ I had fun tonight, let's do it again soon?” _

he responds  _ “I would love to” _

He tells Dodger all about her and says that Bucky would approve of her. But as always he doesn't sleep, he just glares at the framed photo of them. 

It's progress though, it's good.

  
  


—

Steve takes to running at night because it's cool and he can't sleep so he jogs a mile and doesn't really think about anything but the soft packing sounds of his shoes on the concrete and the strain of his breath while he sprints.

Like his near constant production of art, the jogging, as said by his therapist helps a lot. It helps less than he wishes it did but it's something.

  
  


—

He and Peggy have dated for 2 months, he wouldn't call it official by any means but it's progress. 

He dreams every night about Bucky for the few hours that he can sleep.

  
  


—

Steve still breaks down over stupid shit. 

Hearing led Zeppelin over the radio.

Black Honda civics.

Claire de lune by Debussy playing in the supermarket because it was played at Bucky's service. 

Anything Caramel flavored.

Early on he would roll up into fetal position wherever he was and blackout. 

Now he just clenches up like he's tumbling through the air after getting hit by a truck. 

He tries to will himself to relax because that's what you're supposed to do. 

It always leaves him feeling a little sore for the rest of the day.

  
  


—

He almost broke it off with Peggy at the one year anniversary of Bucky's death. He didn't tell her about it, he still hasn't but she never said anything about the fact that he avoided her for a week. He didn't know if Sam told her or whatever because she didn't say anything but she had flowers delivered to (not theirs anymore) his house. 

He cried because they were beautiful and they were somehow the same ones that bucky insisted on during their weddings, Orchids and he's never met a woman that sends flowers to the man but he loves flowers and she's wonderful like that.

She doesn't have those expectations or assumptions like everyone else that Steve's too manly to like flowers or too tough to feel pain. She doesn't make Steve feel any less than what he is. She doesn't expect Steve to not be broken.

So he sketches up the flowers and frames them in a black wooden frame. He texts her a few days after the one year when the screaming hurt has settled back into it's usual soft roar and asks  _ “Would you like to go to prospect park with me? the trees are really nice this time of the year”  _

He's not even sure if she'll respond or if she'll be angry or if she thinks That they're over because  _ Steve's a real fuck up  _ but he's trying and he hopes that she respects him. 

He's not just asking about the park because it's a park but because it's important to him and she deserves that even if she really doesn't know the importance.

It's what he and Bucky used to do during spring, Take walks in prospect park when the trees were in bloom and the sky was blue. They held hands and walked the trail with Bucky's head always up on Steve's shoulder. They'd picnic and kiss each other's cheeks like sappy teenagers that are madly in love like they were. 

They never got a chance last year but he thinks that Bucky would be okay with sharing their ritual.

She says “Yeah absolutely”

He's a little anxious about going to the park again without bucky but he knows there's still a lot of adjustments and sacrifices he needs to make.

  
  


—

He hands her the framed sketch and she hugs him real tight. She's so much smaller than Bucky was and it's weird being hugged in a romantic way again by someone that's not almost the same size as him. 

But he hugs back and he wraps his arms around her shoulders, let's her set her head against his chest, rests his chin in her brown hair that reminds him of Bucky yet doesn't too and it's nice, it's really nice.

  
  


—

Steve visits Bucky's family every month. He has dinner with them, it's always something childish like fish sticks or chicken tenders because that's what Bucky always liked. 

Steve's not really religious anymore but he joins into their prayer for Bucky and he holds their hands like he still believes because he knows how much it means to Bucky's family and he thinks, just maybe bucky can hear them when they say how much they love him.

  
  


—

Steve's afraid of intimacy- that's what his therapist says. 

They've been together for four months, official for one and they haven't had sex. Every time they try Steve gets something called ‘performance anxiety’ and it's embarrassing but Peggy Has never once treated him like he's wrong for it or asked for a reason.

  
  


—

It takes seven months for Peggy To learn about Bucky from Steve and it's not the way he wanted it to be. 

A year and a half, Steve's starting to forget what Bucky's feet looked like and it's strange that it hurts him so much but he has no pictures of them and he's realizing that Bucky's just a series of photographs and memories now.

Steve catches himself not thinking about Bucky occasionally, He catches himself being happy without Bucky. He catches himself sleeping at night, more than just an hour and not hearing Bucky's voice in his dreams and he realizes that the only thing that keeps him remembering Bucky's voice is the videos saved to his laptop that he watches.

“I'm sorry Sharon, I can't do this anymore.” He says over the phone at 9 at night. 

Her voice croaks but she keeps a subtle tone “Um- okay, I understand steve”

“Yeah” He responds because he doesn't know what else to say.

“Can I ask why though?”

And he hasn't even figured out why. “I just- I don't think that I'm ready for a relationship.” He knows it's bullshit because they've been together over six months and he's giving up but he just can't.

There's silence over the line while Steve tries to breathe and then she says exactly what he did yet didn't want to hear. “Steve, can you tell me about him?”

“Did Sam tell you?” He responds. 

“Not much, he said to let you tell me in your time.” She stumbles out an apology “I'm sorry, I know it's not that but maybe you need someone to just listen- to you.”

Steve stares at the Sheetrock on his ceiling and tries to remember Bucky's palms.

“Bucky- that's what I called him.” Steve finally manages after a few minutes of silence. 

“I'm forgetting him” he chokes on a sob that bubbles up in the back of his throat and he thinks about Bucky's smile “I don't want to forget him. I don't want to be okay without him.”

There's nothing over the line for a few minutes except Steve's heavy breathing “He would have liked you a lot.”

  
  


—

Steve and Peggy Hold hands and visit Bucky's gravesite. Grass is grown in over the dirt and bright green like he's been there forever. It has a picture of him with that perfect smile in the slate gray stone with roses engraved and it's absolutely beautiful. 

Peggy Holds Steve's hand firmly while he places orchid flowers in the little vase beside the stone. grabs the old withered ones and takes them to be disposed of. 

He knows that he's emotionless and numb outside but he aches dull and deep in his chest but this time it's a little less of a hurt and a little more of a comfort. 

Bucky's gone, he knows that. He can never change that but that will never change how fucking incredibly wonderful he was before he left. It'll never change his soul or his smile in photographs or the sound of his voice etched into Steve's brain.

Steve realizes that Bucky's gone but he'll always be alive in some form. In videos and photos and lucid dreams and memories.

He kisses his palm and sets it against the beautiful little picture of Bucky before he leaves. 

Peggy doesn't say a word and Steve really loves her for that. For accepting and loving him.

  
  


—

Even three years later he's not sure if he can really love anyone quite like he does Bucky. 

Peggy knows that abs she's okay with it and...She really,  _ really  _ makes Steve happy. 

  
  


—

There's an exhibit featuring 17 painting that Steve's done of Bucky in Manhattan on the 4 year mark of his death. One hundred percent of the proceeds benefit a cancer charity under Bucky's name as a donation.

Steve holds Peggy's hand in front of the watercolor that the client noticed years ago. She came with her daughter and held Steve in her arms like she had known him forever. Wet tears soaked into his shirt and flowed soft down his own cheeks. 

He still doesn't cry much and aches a whole lot but he's living and he's happy and he sees a lot of beauty in the world these days.

She buys the piece under her late husband's name and a gracious donation.

 

 

—

Everyone wants to touch Peggy's pregnancy swollen belly. Dr says it's at 28 weeks, “it's going to be a boy, his name's going to be James” Peggy always says with the sweetest most lovely red smile.

Steve likes to lie his head on her belly in bed at night. Likes to feel baby James kick around and move. There's something really perfect about knowing that there's a living thing cuddled up inside of her.

Steve makes a promise to love James like he does Bucky. Forever and unconditionally.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://tyranttirade.tumblr.com/)


End file.
